eBook intro: Television’s “big iron” broadcasting systems—vast collections of wires and machines in use since the medium’s birth nearly a century ago—are fading away as operations shift toward the cloud. This massive transition to IP protocols is far from complete but already the industry is trying to stay ahead of its many business implications.

The “on-off” switch still works the same, but nearly everything else has changed about connecting viewers with programming. Signals once transmitted in analog fashion via dedicated satellites and received with antenna are now encoded and distributed digitally and streamed via broadband. And it isn’t just a single industry modernizing in isolation – broadcast TV’s changes are occurring against the backdrop of relentless shifts across media and technology. Video content is now served up via dozens of connected devices, across more than 120 OTT networks and countless websites. Continue reading here…